Sitting Sexy on a Piano
Stock pose for sultry songbirds of every type, from cabaret crooners to navy nightingales. In essence, the singer sits on or leans heavily against a piano, posturing suggestively. If the piano is big enough, she'll often actually lie on top of it.
![](http://static.miraheze.org/allthetropeswiki/3/3f/Piano_lean_2644.jpg)
Compare Ready for Lovemaking, which this is no doubt meant to invoke. There's often some playful teasing going on with The Piano Player-- and of course the audience.
Do not expect her to be paired with a Lounge Lizard, unless he's actually competent.
Examples:
Comics
- Saloon singers in Lucky Luke albums tend to do this.
- In a way, Lucy Van Pelt leaning on Schroeder's piano.
Film
- The film of Chicago: Roxie Hart during her imaginary first performance (My Funny Honey) rides this pony for all it's worth.
- The Fairy Godmother does this in Shrek 2 when she's singing "I Need a Hero".
- In The Fabulous Baker Boys, Michelle Pfeiffer frequently does this; it's even the page image!
- Parodied in Hot Shots, where the singer lies on a grand piano and (in the process of wiggling seductively) manages to shimmy right off.
- Used to disturbing effect with John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich. Malkovich Malkovich.
- Ralph Bakshi's Cool World has this with the Femme Fatale villainess.
- Johnny Dangerously. Johnny's girlfriend Lil Sheridan does this while singing in a nightclub.
- Parodied/exaggerated in Cats Don't Dance, when the sickeningly-sweet child actress does this on a piano sized for her enormous butler Max. You get the impression she could roll around for several hours and never be in danger of falling off.
Live Action TV
- The Benny Hill Show: Benny would frequently play a singer who has trouble hopping up onto the piano.
- The Office: Jan does this for her scene in Michael's movie, "Threat Level Midnight".
- In an Imagine Spot in Parker Lewis Can't Lose, Miss Musso is seen doing this.
- Saturday Night Live parodied this trope twice:
- On the LeBron James/Kanye West episode (the first episode of season 33) had the Digital Short, "Iran So Far," which featured Fred Armisen as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a red dress on top of a piano.
- On the Sigourney Weaver/The Ting Tings episode (from season 35), Weaver plays a lounge singer who invokes this trope, but ends up yelling at the piano player (played by Bobby Moynihan) when she starts freaking out about how high up she is ( The piano player thinks she's kidding, until she ends up falling 60 feet and the piano player immediately notices).
- Haley Reinhart on American Idol. B-B-B-Benny. And the Jetsssss..... Also doubles as She's Got Legs. And hoooooooooooooow.
- Outright stated to be a shoutout to The Fabulous Baker Boys.
- The Kids in The Hall: Parodied by Kevin McDonald in this sketch.
- On an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway, Wayne Brady does this during a playing of Greatest Hits while singing in the style of Eartha Kitt. Here's the clip.
- Israeli skit show The Chamber Quintette has a skit parodying this, with Keren Mor singing Bab el-Wad, a memorial song for dead soldiers, as a sexy cabaret girl.
Music
Theatre
- This was Helen Morgan's routine in the 1920s; she performed "Bill" this way (for a rather dissipated version of "sexy") in the original production of Show Boat (but not the 1936 film version).
Web Comics
- Bug claims that a downside to owning a piano is that one is always having to shoo sultry lounge singers off it before their sequins scratch the varnish.
Western Animation
- Dot Warner occasionally does this on Animaniacs.
- Lois of Family Guy did this after Peter remodeled their basement into a club.
- June does this in an episode of Ka Blam
- Clarice, a chipmunk lounge singer, does this in the Chip and Dale short Two Chips and a Miss.
- Laverne the old lady gargoyle in The Hunchback of Notre Dame puts on a feather boa and poses on a piano during their Disney Acid Sequence.
- Ling-Ling does this for his musical number on the Drawn Together musical series finale.
- Patti Mayonnaise in one of Doug Funnie's fantasy sequences
Real Life
- Lauren Bacall struck this pose in a famous photo with then-Vice President Harry Truman at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. in 1945.